


Every Time You Breathe

by TyRose78



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24806200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TyRose78/pseuds/TyRose78
Summary: Little angsty piece around Mulder's thoughts on world without Scully during the cancer arc in season 4/5 up through Redux (1). MSR, angst.
Relationships: Mulder - Relationship, Scully - Relationship
Kudos: 8





	Every Time You Breathe

Every time You Breathe

by TyRose78

Just an angsty little piece revolving around Mulder's thoughts during the cancer arc in season 4 up through Redux (I). Also a small reference to Theef in season 7 (I know, I hop around ;) ). Feel feel to share, just please keep my name on it. As always, don't own the characters, no infringement intended.

Every time you breathe, your soft breath falling on my cheek as you lean over to show me the lab results from our latest case, I hear you gasping from a hospital bed on a day I know is coming.

Every time you smile, your full lips curved in an enigmatic arch as you show me silently what you're too kind to say about my theory, I see them thin and crack as we move ever closer to a deadline we cannot miss.

Every time you take my hand, your tiny fingers warm and full in mine, I feel my hand cold and empty, grasping for yours the day you will leave me.

Every time you laugh, the sound of it filling the air with sunshine over things I cannot guess at, I hear my sobs underneath it, dark and broken without you.

Every time you pass me, your copper hair whispering across your throat, that stubborn forelock I swear "winks" at me, I see it limp and pale, splayed across a pillow you will never wake from.

I grasp at every moment with you, desperate to stop time and clutch you to me forever outside of its flow, yet despondent as I'm lashed to the inertia of this path leading to an end I'd give my soul to stop. We are wasting time dancing at arm's length; an empty office, a broken chair superimposed on every entry you make through my door. I'm becoming the Ghost of Christmas Future.

We've made some adjustments these days, some concessions to a relationship that's not quite professional, but so much less than I'd like it to be. I reach out more often than I should to touch you; you pull back instinctively, slipping out of my grasp too quickly as if you think it will be kinder to fade away from me like mist. Ephemeral.

Yet you patiently endure me, taking my hand sweetly when I grasp for you, opening the door when I arrive with one more pizza, sitting near enough to me that I can feel the heat of your life's blood, picking up the phone over and over in the night in silence when neither of us can find the words to say,

I need you.

I love you.

You complete me.

Stay.

I try to memorize you, with or without your knowing it and you sometimes meet my gaze, both daring and allowing. I would never patronize you or suggest you were anything less than powerful, yet my resolve is weakening and I feel the time is coming when I will beg to fold you in my arms, if only to siphon that strength off for myself to keep going.

I stop making up reasons to come into your world. You stop asking me why I'm there.

I've been staying on the couch a few times a week; my toothbrush in its own cup in the bathroom and an extra pair of shoes by the door. Sometimes I open the bedroom door while you sleep just to make sure you're still there and I think you know, but you won't mention it. Sometimes you come out and wake me, silently slipping under the blanket for a few minutes so I can feel just how thin you're becoming, and you somehow know when to disappear just before I break down to cry. And sometimes, I weep in the shower so you cannot hear, my tears lost in the flow so they cannot betray me. But sometimes I see your shadow under the door, listening, and we speak of it.

I wish you would cry. I wish you would sob for the injustice of it all, for the loss of your beautiful soul as I do, so I wouldn't weep alone. I wish you would run to me and clutch onto me for the life this world is so inept to save. I wish you would let me absorb you so I'd no longer know where I ended and you began.

I know what the line is even in this new territory between us. You've become no less beautiful to me; you never could. I still long for you to be part of me, for me to be inside of you. But I know this must be on your terms and your rationalization would say that the situation has naturally led me to these feelings. But what I feel could not be more natural to a man towards the woman he loves. Yet it takes everything in me to hold back, because I am afraid I would hurt you, and I know if I start, I won't be able to stop.

You call me to meet you at the funeral parlor and I am sickened as I realize you want me to witness your wishes, terrified to realize every moment we waste on something other than each other is time I will never get back. The headstone is like you, small and tasteful, but heavy enough to crush us both. I see myself going to sleep in my grave having never woken up next to you.

I don't believe in a god or an afterlife for me, but for you I believe there surely must be. That you were even born proves to me like nothing I've ever held in my hands that there is some benevolent being waiting to welcome you to some heaven where words such as cancer have never been uttered. That I will do anything to atone on this earth if it would earn me a ticket to where you are going. I no longer want to die for you, I want to die with you, believing somehow in that way I will have the chance to latch myself to you, that maybe your god will see how pure my love is and grant me some sort of pardon to follow you into Paradise.

You close the door behind us when we return, the papers in your hand dumped on the table and I stand, unable to fathom where to go next. You disappear to change your clothes and when you come back, I'm still standing where you left me, hands clenching in fury that even in this light I can see where the needles have left little scars on your arms, where your freckles are getting so much darker as your skin fades, where your ribs are becoming unmistakable.

You walk up to me and stand silently, uncurling my hands in yours and lifting them to your face tenderly. You allow my fingers to caress your cheeks, to memorize the silk of your skin, to graze your eyes and lips so I can see them in my sleep. My mouth draws open, and every time I breathe, I hear the sob of a man lost, but the words that come out as whispers are, "I need you. So much."

"I know," I hear you sigh, and you open your eyes and pull my head down to you, pressing your lips to mine over and over. Oh, you still keep me guessing.

And every time you kiss me, I weep.


End file.
